To return to the laws regulating prostitution, it appears that a serious effort was made to put it down under the sovereignty of Catharine of Medicis. An ordinance of Charles IX., dated 1560, prohibited the opening or keeping of any brothel or house of reception for prostitutes in Paris. For a short period it seems that the practice was actually suppressed, and the consequence is said to have been a large increase of secret debauchery. A few years after the passage of the ordinance, a Huguenot clergyman named Cayet proposed to re-establish public brothels in the interest of the public morals, but the authorities of his Church assailed him so vehemently that his scheme fell to the ground without having had the benefit of a public discussion, and he was himself driven to join the Romanists. In 1588 an ordinance of Henry III. reaffirmed the ordinance of 1560, and alleged that the magistrates of the city had connived at the establishment of brothels. Ordinances of the provost followed in the same strain, and all prostitutes were required to leave Paris within twenty-four hours. An ordinance dated 1635 was still more rigorous. It condemned all men concerned in the "traffic of prostitution" to the galleys for life, and all women and girls to be "whipped, shaved, and banished for life, without any formal trial." As might be imagined, this ordinance was alternately disregarded and made to serve the purposes of private malice. Men who wished to revenge themselves on their mistresses accused them of being prostitutes; but _it does not appear that the actual supply was ever seriously diminished_. CHAPTER VIII. FRANCE.--HISTORY FROM LOUIS XIII. TO THE PRESENT DAY. Exile of Prostitutes.--Measures of Louis XIV.--Laws of 1684 and 1713.--Police Regulations.--Ordinance of 1778.--Republican Legislation.--Frightful state of Paris.--Efforts to pass a general Law.--The Court.--Louis XIII.--The Medicis.--Louis XIV.--La Vallière.--Montespan.--Maintenon.--Literature of the Day.--Feudal Rights.--The Regency.--Duchess of Berri.--Claudine du Tencin.--Louis XV.--Madame de Pompadour.--Dubarry.--Pare aux Cerfs.--Louis XVI.--Philippe Egalité.--Subsequent Sovereigns.--Literature.--Lewd Novels and Pictures.--Tendency of Philosophy.--The Church. We have thus sketched the history of prostitution in France from the commencement of the French nation to the reign of Louis XIII. This chapter will complete the subject to the present day.